Tales of Ouroboros
by Fluehatraya
Summary: In a village that knows itself as the World set apart from the World, stories come together to make a story of their own.
1. Metal of a Lost Grave

**Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.**

**Author's Note: I just wanted to try something out. It was supposed to be shorter, but it kept on expanding. Feel free to make your own conclusions about the stuff in this story, if you desire.**

There was a small village, cradled by a river and resting at the foot of a mountain, while expansive coniferous forests spread out in all directions. Few came by the isolated village, which seemed as if it sat on a line between reality and something else. It was perhaps truer than any knew.

This village was so small that it did not have a name, but to its residents it was the World. It was a place of its own, a child's special bauble kept secret and stashed away from the rest of the world. In this little World of its own, fairytales were popular, and fact and fiction were so blurred to the denizens that they would sooner believe in dragons than the possibility that anything existed beyond the forests.

Yet there was one fairytale native to the village that most agreed was undeniably fiction. The people did not know why they dismissed it as fiction, nor did they know how it had originated or how long it had been around. They regarded it with suspicion, for although it was as constant in their lives as the sun in the sky at day, it never failed to present itself as new to a listener, no matter how many times they heard it.

It was the tale of a spirit. Some said it was but the faintest outline of armor, while others claimed that it was a young boy that never found its way to its proper place. It lived on the mountain, not at the peak, or in a cave, mind you, but just in an ordinary spot.

There was another detail of the story that was always left out save for its annual telling on the summer solstice, that the spirit, always a boy in this version, lurks around an arm and leg of alien design, fashioned of cold metal. They claim that the artificial limbs lie amongst and are overgrown by tall grasses and weeds that cling to them tenaciously, while they rust from neglect. Some debate that it is not rust that mars the chillingly beautiful creations of man, a mockery of life, but blood.

No one brings up the question of why blood could be on them. The village has no answers for that, for this is one fairytale without a beginning or an end.

They say that the ghost circles around the metal constructs, attempting to shake them but failing with a lack of body, crying out with the lamentation of a loss more precious than that of his life.

Nobody has seen those limbs. Nobody wants to.

But the ghost armor/boy has been seen before, and even spoken to. It is said that he was the one to first tell the fairytale, to a young boy that did not understand the concept of death, but could see it in the flickering red light hidden behind the spirit's transparent eyes, only the faintest tinge of honey hazel coloring them.

There are people who have seen the image of the boy superimposed over that of the armor. When asked why this was, the entity claimed that those were the people that understand loss without gain, sacrifice without purpose.

The fairytale ends at this part, to the derisive snorts of the listener.

Everyone in the village has seen the spirit on the mountain, clinging to limbs that were real at one point beyond a black veil, at least once.

Those that have seen the image of the boy superimposed over that of the armor do not speak of it to others, even those few that share the true knowledge of it. Nobody would believe them, and some things should not be spoken of.

A boy hobbling along on a crutch whilst making a crude attempt at running despite a lame limb goes by the only tavern in the nameless village, and overhears the telling of the story to one of the rare travelers that came out to see what the World is to others. No one discovers the village by accident.

While laughs are shared and drinks passed around, the boy smiles, something beyond comprehension shining in those peculiar eyes of metallic gold that are his and his alone. Those that look into them deny ever seeing the shine, and do not acknowledge the feeling of their very souls being stripped away.

This boy knows the true name of the World, forgotten to those that would claim it their own. He also knows of the line over which the black veil drops, and what lies beyond. But he does not know what lies before.

But it is not time to dwell on such thoughts, for he has promised a lonely friend closer to him than family, as close as if he were himself and so much more, a picnic, where they will pay homage to a grave for one that does not sleep eternally, that does not belong in the World or any World beyond.


	2. Eyes of Ancient Humanity

**Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.**

**Author's Note: Huh, the first chapter was supposed to be a stand-alone, but then I got this idea, and I already have the next idea planned. Look forward for the Walking Ruins, if you enjoy these tales. Feel free to come up with whatever conclusions you make about these stories.**

For as long as the collective memory of the World can recall, there has been a statue on the outskirts of the village without a name. They say it depicts an angel.

It is a very sophisticated and beautiful thing, fashioned of steel formed by loving hands, no detail forsaken. It is a tragic thing. The angel is beautiful even with his face twisted into a final snarl of defiance. His wings, once surely grand and imposing, are crippled and twisted, coming to droop to the ground with strange angles. It looks as if the angel is making an effort to keep them raised but is failing. It lunges forward, its right arm, which morphs seamlessly into a deadly blade, poised back and ready to strike in a way reminiscent of a scorpion tail.

The eyes of the angel are hollow and nicked up. Once could come to the conclusion that whatever once graced those desolately empty sockets was valuable.

The statue is frequently on the minds of the villagers, and they are always prepared to discuss it at a moment's notice. There is something that sets them on edge about it, anticipation, crouching on a razor-thin precipice over nothing with a fire spurning one forth from the back.

They are all ignorant. The villagers have never known anything. They claim the World as the World, lofting it up, but they force the blindfolds to remain on.

For all their efforts however, the blindfolds sometimes slip.

They see pure nuggets, perfectly round. They sit there, acting as the eyes of the angel. Those eyes are not pure, but the villagers never could and never will be able to tell the difference.

Nobody sees the eyes come into being. When they are there, the nicks around the sockets are mysteriously absent. They praise them, and claim that their village, the World, is watched over and protected.

At the witching hour, sometimes two red glows glare at the village from the direction of the statue. Everybody knows not to investigate it. But a boy did once, and he claimed that the eyes had been replaced by the reddest stones he had ever seen, lit from within by a chillingly magnificent light of their own. He said that he might have seen blood pouring down from beneath the feathers of those mutilated wings.

The statue is not alive. It never was nor will it ever be.

Gold, like the eyes the angel possesses sometimes, is ancient. When has human not thought of it, if not in metal, then in another form? It has seen the passing of superfluous mortal history, passive and above it all. At twilight's time though, gold glints as it receives the blame. Gold is synonymous with greed, but it cannot be greed.

Red like blood. How much has been shed, and how much more will be shed? What have the midnight eyes of an angel captured in dead metal witnessed?

But the statue is not alive. It never was nor will it ever be, and could never have seen anything. It is more ignorant than a newborn, reveling in a bliss nothing living could ever even hope to achieve.

It has witnessed the rise of the World and, when its end comes, the angel statue is all that remains. It is still poised to launch a final attack that will never come, at an enemy that has never existed.

Only when it is alone does its visage relax, rage seeping away in a red mist as the face slips into an expression of melancholy.

The gold during the change comes to be replaced by the red stones, which twinkle like evil stars alone in the void, finally free to be released and kept hidden from the sights of any others.


	3. Walking Ruins

**Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.**

To the north of the World at the edge of one of the great forests there is a cave. It is a gaping maw opening up into the hungry earth, and the denizens of the World have fed it with the bodies of their dead and diseased. The bearers of these never venture into the cave itself, tossing their loads into it and then getting away as soon as possible. Despite this, it has never shown any sign of even becoming close to filled up.

One day, ruins walked out of that cave, crumbling walls of elaborately carved sandstone, traveling over the surrounding lands as if they were a sentient being. No traces of its passage are ever recorded.

Yet one morning the village awoke to find the ruins all around them, having settled in the village. It was as if the village had been built on the site of a ruined civilization noticeably different from their own. The people went about their business as usual, picking their way around the rubble as if nothing was out of the norm.

At night, the people claimed to have spotted ghosts glowing red, those of numbered men, and an odiferous beast slinking about, seeming to look for something. They said fearsome teeth came to ring the cave entrance, and men known to the World long past scrambled futilely away from it, to be dragged back into its peerless darkness with a rattling sound and an incessant rush of wind.

Upon dawn's breaking a lion crowned with rubies perched upon his mane, his legs replaced by the sinewy coils of a wyrm, descended from the sun to land before the cave and confront the beast that had slunk around the ruins and was then approaching the cave from whence it had come from.

When the lion's jaws met the throat of the beast, their forms condensed and they disappeared in a great flash of light. Twenty-three men were revealed to be standing in the spot where the two had been formerly once the light had cleared.

They came to clasp hands with one another in prayer, and returned to the cave, which closed after them. The ruins went east, and were never seen again at the village. The people do not understand at all what happened, but feel what had occurred had determined the fate of a World beyond just their own.


	4. A Desert Will Be Brought

**Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.**

It is always a surprise to travelers to come to the World to hear that they know of the desert. Surrounded by a seemingly endless landscape of forest and mountain, they would think this not to be the case. Yet every inhabitant of the secluded village, even the youngest child, can tell them what the desert is like. When asked how this is, the villagers grow cold to the outsider, making it very clear how alone they truly are in the World.

Yet a young boy with many faces is always willing to explain this. The travelers always mention him in their tales of the peculiar village in nowhere, and never stop to wonder how the same boy is always referred to even though word of the desert-knowing village and the secret-revealing boy has always been a boy despite the relative age of the story. It seems as if the World is so isolated that it even follows its own course of time.

To the travelers, the boy will tell of how a wind will sweep over the World every spring from the east, carrying with it the heat of the desert day and men of sand wielding guns that spit fire back from whence they came as they are whipped off to return next year. He hesitates at the mention of fire, turning his face ever so slightly to his audience, and at this they see its marred flesh and ravaged eyes before a curtain of black falls to cover them once more.

He claims that, chasing the wind is a heavy downpour that brings with it a ghostly mist that lingers in the forests, finding sanctuary there away from all that troubles the world. It had not always been this way, the screaming wind that rampages angrily over the lands it passes and the accusing rain, along with the mist that every year seeks shelter in the trees before moving on to chase the wind. In fact, it is a very recent thing.

The boy then turns around to face those that listen to him dead-on, and his mutilated face splits into a Glasgow smile, revealing metal teeth. Rust spots the chipped surface of them, along with blood and sand.

The travelers hurry away at the sight of this, and know that the World's days are numbered.


	5. Cataclysm of Suicide

**Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.**

The World knew well a dark man dressed in midnight. He had, in his youth, been a denizen of the sleepy little village. But then he ventured into the cave that swallows death and had not been seen for the longest time since. He had been the first of two to be swallowed up, and it appeared that his state of living had disagreed with the cave, for he returned alive.

Naturally, the Midnight Man had been questioned ceaselessly when he returned. He claimed that he came before a black veil upon entering the cave, standing upon a razor tightrope. Also said was that there was a lion crowned with gleaming rubies and above them a sun, staring down with the saddest expression at him. The weary feline then dropped before him one of those too-bright stones, and knowing that it was meant for himself, he accepted it. He had been compelled to, even though the light of the jewel seemed malevolent, sucking in the sun's light and releasing a dark mirror of it.

When he had done so, a revelation dawned upon him that it was not his choice to pass through the veil; he was required to, for he was needed.

So he passed through.

At this point the returnee claims that he cannot go about what happened afterwards. This is met with no small amount of discontent grumbling, but the conviction in the man's voice is a cutting wind and they keep their objections to themselves.

Those that remembered the Midnight Man before his long absence – and those are few indeed – say that he has changed. Of course, there is the change that is wrought by time upon all mortals, but there that was not what they speak of. Where there had once been a youth in white with mountains at his back and even more at his front was now the dark man, before whom was blood and behind him wind. They claim that one of his eyes had been stolen by a dragon and replaced with one of his enemy's eyes, gouged out by sword.

A cripple boy says that he saw in the stolen eye, before it was cloaked with shame, the same red glow that comes from the metal angel's eyes in the first hour of the morning.

With the return of the darkened man, another stepped up to the death-swallowing cave clad in the sacrificial garb of an era long gone by in the World – at least, not in the sight of the sun and touch of the wind. He bears a startlingly strong resemblance to the man whose eye now lies with the Midnight Man.

He then stepped into the earth's maw to join the dead.

Like the Midnight Man, the man that charged death and emerged almost-intact, he too returns. His return came within a fortnight. No obligations bear weight upon his shoulders either, for he speaks of what occurred beyond the veil. He tells of the metal angel brought to life and far different from its depiction and the armor/boy spirit, walking amid the living.

At this point in the story the people of the World denounce the second returnee's tale, for it must be a fairytale just as the armor/boy spirit is. Thus, they do not hear how the story continues, of another World on the other side of the black veil and its sudden, but so obviously coming, fate.

The World is deaf.

The cripple boy frowns.

The Midnight Man scowls.

The many-faced boy grins, bullets for teeth, hidden behind a black curtain of his own.

And abandoned limbs gleam as if smiling despite their state of decay.

A misty boy sees the cheer of those false metal constructs and also frowns, knowing that soon his well-earned rest will be interrupted.


	6. Remembering the Present

**Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.**

The World was proud to say that it was a civilized place, having long risen above such barbaric acts like sacrifice such as were once practiced in excess in an ancient past no longer remembered. The reason why it cannot be remembered is that, unlike the past and future, one cannot remember the present.

For in the village there is a shadow, lurking in a realm upon which the World is superimposed, and it demands sacrifice in its honor, to its power. The shadow is a monster, and the last of its kind. While monsters cannot truly die, they can come to adapt and take on different forms as necessary to exist in a forever changing world. This one is vain however and stands rigid against the tides of time, whereas its siblings have long since allowed themselves to be swept up with them.

There are others, far more susceptible to the seconds that scour their life away as they pass them by, that too would stand against the reforming world. These ones the World's monster seduces to the shimmering plane of long-shadowed summers that it dwells within, to a single temple.

In covert operation the cult would spirit away their fellow citizens away at night and dress them in sacrificial garbs, to present their unnatural idol with.

One day however, a man bearing the mark of a lion upon his brow was guided by a twinkling red light wrapped about a golden core to the monster's realm and fought with it. However, like time, the warrior had no effect on the steadfast being and eventually beat a retreat back to the World he knew as real. Through his actions however, the denizens of the World became educated of the monster and its followers. They expunged their village of its followers and left it stranded in its temple, for it does not have any power beyond there anymore.

Still, the shadow remains, and grows darker with every second it fends off.


	7. Fire Wraith

**Disclaimer: I do now own Fullmetal Alchemist.**

**Author's Note: Yeah, I've had this written up for around a year. Why didn't I ever upload it? Meh, I was too lazy to get out my USB stick that I had saved it on. Seriously, that's my only excuse. No alterations were made to this chapter since it was written save for this AN.**

On a hill near the death-swallowing cave and just barely within the village was the cabin belonging to the village head. It was a modest dwelling and far more new than any of the other buildings in the World.

The village head had disappeared one day to chase a falling star, leaving everything behind to his son. The boy's mother had died shortly before this.

One day it was said that at dusk the wraith of the boy's mother glided like malice out of the death-swallowing cave and took up residence back in her old home with her son. It is said that she remains there.

The boy seems to get along with this fine, although he refuses to tell anyone anything and they cannot cross the threshold into the house. But the boy knows that she is a spirit of fire and omen. When she turns to face him, he sees her lidless eyes and that they are hollow. Within their carven depths is a fire that lights the rims up an angry glowing red. When she opens her mouth, a clump of ash in place of a tongue is revealed before it crumbles down to the floor in flakes.

He knows that when it is time the house will burn and he will face Fate.


End file.
